Between Two Worlds Kafadar.pdf

elatively more "establishment" view of the Ottoman adventure in Arabic. To
these must be added another relatively independent set of works: annalistic
calendars (takvim ) that were apparently produced by a variety of Anatolian
astrologers and/or dervishes, only some of whom were connected to the Ottomans.
[106]
While the Timurids were receding into distant memory in the second part of the
century, more-immediate concerns, about various elements of Mehmed's imperial
project, emerged and were incorporated in later chronicles that include a
critical voice (Apz, Uruç, and the anonymous ones mentioned above). The three
decades from the conquest of Constantinople to the victories of Kilia-Akkirman
in 1484 witnessed the most intensive phase in the development of the Ottoman
political technology that we now call the classical Ottoman system. The
best-known aspect of this process has been described as the graduation from a
frontier principality to an empire, with accompanying changes in the
institutional and ideological spheres. Like any major political transformation,
this
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process was not free of strain and strife. Some of the losers appeared as soon
as the day after the grand conquest, when Çandarli Halil , grandson of the scion
of this vezirial dynasty, was arrested and soon executed. His rivals did not end
up as winners either. Two prominent frontier war-lords, leaders of the
anti-Çandarli party, were also executed in a couple of years. There was
obviously much resentment, from various corners, toward Mehmed II's systematic
pursuit of an "imperial project," starting with the establishment of
Constantinople as the new capital.[107] Much of that resentment found expression
in the chronicles and coalesced with the critique against the earlier
centralization-cum-imperialization drive attributed to Bayezid I. But the most
sweeping transformation and the broadest-based uproar came toward the end of
Mehmed's reign when he confiscated more than a thousand villages that were held,
as freehold or endowment, by descendants of early colonizers, mostly dervishes.
We shall deal with Mehmed's imperial policy and its losers again in the next
chapter, but here it must be noted that the most substantive body of early
Ottoman historical output — the chronicles of the House of Osman — was produced
by those who lived through that era. Most of these authors were evidently
dervishes or close enough to the gazi-dervish milieux to have been touched,
either personally or through their patrons, by those policies.
When Bayezid II replaced his father in 1481, he faced not only the challenge of
his younger brother but also the fury of the uprooted. Bayezid made no
compromises with his brother, whom he forced into tragic exile and, allegedly,
arranged to be poisoned, but he was forced to appease the losers of Mehmed's
confiscation drive by rerecognizing their entitlements to earlier privileges.
After the elimination of Cem's challenge and the reprivatization of lands,
Bayezid undertook a campaign into the realm of the infidels and also proved
himself not wanting in the spirit of gaza. It was upon his return from that
campaign in 1484 that he ordered the recording of what thus far had been mostly
oral traditions about the founding fathers. Most of the critical chronicles were
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